Griffins coach Tony LeBlanc remarked on playing in the hot and humid conditions far away from home on Labor Day weekend.

“You know, it has been traditionally very hard for us in the past coming down here,” he said. “We try to do this trip about once a year, so the past three to four years we’ve been down here and haven’t done so well, but this team is a pretty good one with a lot of good experience and I thought we were ready for it.

“I thought we were a little slow at the start. With the heat and the humidity, it dragged on a little bit. We were a little slow, but I think we definitely picked it up toward the middle of the first period and came on strong in the second.”

Sand Shark coach Ed Heberling spoke about second half adjustments and the benefits of USCB’s schedule.

“The great thing with our schedule is that I specifically schedule tough games like this one,” he said. “Our two games this weekend were against the No. 26 (Westminster) and No. 29 (Georgia Gwinnett) teams in the nation (NAIA coaches’ preseason poll), so those are our test games to see what we really need to work on.

“We made a couple of adjustments and did a much better job to open up the second period, but we gave up some deep shots that they snuck in under the bar. But at least we were able to make the change and do a lot better. Our two losses this weekend have to be taken out on our upcoming opponents.”

The Griffins opened with an aggressive posture and remained physical throughout the game, racking up seven fouls to the Sand Sharks’ four.

Westminster scored first in the 22nd minute when forward Rylei North left-footed a long shot from Miranda Olsen inside the far left post for her first goal of the season, and Olsen’s first assist of the year.

The Sand Sharks were able to hold the Griffins without a goal for the remainder of the first period, but Westminster scored again in the 61st minute on a 30-yard shot from Lexi Tucker that was just out of Gallman’s reach.

The Griffins scored their final goal of the day off a turnover deep in USCB territory that Jessica James turned into her first career goal after she beat the keeper one-on-one.

Heberling said he will use today and Thursday to prepare the team for two upcoming weekend games.

“We’ll be working on some defensive tactics these next couple of days,” he said. “As I watched this game there was one big thing with our front line that they weren’t quite understanding and it started to become a trend that I noticed a lot, and so we’re going to work on that, as well as getting more evolved in our runs up front at forward as we try to create more havoc and chaos behind our opponents’ back lines.

“All in all, good things are going to come from this because the girls are going to be hungry to get better and improve. Hopefully we’ll move forward from here, train and continue to get better.”

Up next for USCB are the two final games in a four-game homestand. The Sand Sharks will take on St. Andrews at 5 p.m. Friday and Talladega at noon Sunday.